January 05, 2002
This is the voice of the Eurotons! We know you can hear us, Earthmen. We will be avenged.
A reader who will remain nameless to spare his blushes (Hi, Ben!) asked why, when there are 15 members of the EU, were there only twelve mystic stars. The answer, of course, is because the Eurotons have not yet managed to Eurotonize Captains Krone, Krona and Sterling. The rest of the brave Spectrum crew, including Colonel Mark, Captains Franc and Guilder and even poor Peseta Angel and Lira Angel have been all been killed and remade into Euroton duplicates, varying in their outer appearance but with their motivations centrally controlled from the mysterious Euroton base in Brussels. Is Captain Scarlet, sorry, Sterling really indestructible? Can he save Cloudbase? Only time will tell.
Captain Euro!
Captain Euro is a European superhero. He battles Dr D Vide (dee-vide, geddit?), of whom we are told:"Ruthless speculator, curator and collector of ancient curiosities, DAVID VIDERIUS is a former financier. He is a multi-millionaire, used to making money no matter if it might involve the suffering of others."In contrast his noble opponent is an archaeologist in civilian life. Together with his father and a chick called Europa he uncovers "three messages from the gods of Europe." They find a magic axe which splits into twelve stars. Quite stirring stuff, actually, but dreadfully slow to read. When do we see our man's battle with the evil Captain Sterling? Or his wicked paymaster, Colonel Dollar?
And a brief discussion of plain old lust.
I am mentioned, most kindly, in the Midwest Conservative Journal as part of an ongoing debate involving the Fly Bottle, Christianity and pornography. Unfortunately, I just can't make the link to the MCJ work, perhaps because the Journal is that strange thing, a non-Blogger Blog. But my cunning in the cause of my own advertisement knows no limits. What you can do, my lambs, is pop over to The Edge of England's Sword and track down the link to the MCJ nestling 'neath the heading "Recommended." While you're there you can see how Iain Murray beat me to it in linking to the same BBC News 24 story about gun crime that I had had my eye on.
More blood lust, this time from me.
This time directed against wood pigeons. Shoot a wood pigeon today. They are driving out all the song birds, according to a program on Radio 4. Why is this happening now? Fewer hunters, larger fields. Why are there fewer hunters and larger fields? PC and EU.
'Blood lust' leaves 'roo to die.
is the panting headline of the top "National" story in Australia's Daily Telegraph. Look, it's not that I'm happy about an animal killed inhumanely, but... one kangaroo. Count it. One. And if you look past the headline you discover that it probably isn't even dead. Though let us not make light of the situation: after all, as Melbourne Zoo's Dr Michael Lynch breathlessly informs us, "'Even though she's mobile now, she can expect complications. Infections are going to be a problem." Goodness me. We're all very concerned. I hope the Sydney papers don't try and distract people with less important stories.
January 04, 2002
Sailing on a Zilber sea...
Do you remember that amazing USA Today article about who lived and who died in the WTC towers? Remember how I forgot where I got it from? It was under my nose all the time, at Jay Zilber's Mind Over What Matters. (Look under Dec 21.) A little further up the column there is a piece about the changes in the graphic design and printing business. Back in the late 80s I used to be a staff artist at a Prontaprint franchise, so that brought back memories. When I plied the old scalpel suffused in the rich aroma of spray adhesive, I was struck by how little things differed from the picture painted by Dorothy L Sayers in Murder Must Advertise. The main difference between an office supplying commercial art in the nineteen-eighties and its equivalent in the thirties was the absence of office boys. Yet who now does paste-up, makes borders with Rotring pens, or applies Letraset to do headings? Gone, gone are the jobs of yesteryear. Curse these computers (and use a computer to do it). Please, Mr Zilber, tell me there is yet some call for actual drawing....
Psyops strike
! That man Reynolds gets everywhere. It's obvious he wrote this leaflet dropped in Afghanistan for a start. Ignore his denials.Talking of Instapundit, I have belatedly added a link at the side. Since it was thirty seconds after first seeing Instapundit that I decided that "one of those blog things" took second place in the must-have list only to "oxygen", I can't imagine why it took me so long. Still, the way the Professor gamely struggled on without my help is an example to us all.
Supervillains reprise.
That's reprise, not reprisal, get out from under the chair. A lady with the beautiful name of Myria has responded to my chiding of American TV for always having British villains. She wrote before I went waffling on about that Moria/Moira thing, so now I feel even guiltier. Not only do I insult women in my links column, I insult my female readers too. Sorry. Anyway, I thought this was perceptive:"To paraphrase Bill Murray in "Stripes" - We Americans are mutts, theAll sorts of aphorisms spring to mind. All right, if you insist, here's one: OK guys. You won the war of Independence. Deal with it. Just kidding. I am on safer ground with Myria's final observation:
wretched refuse, our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country there is". But, he goes on to say, "We've been 'kicking ass' ever since". There is much to that little speech for those who wish to understand how Americans tend to view themselves.
To an American audience a cultured British accent means someone who's brighter and classier than we are - if weaker and just as vulnerable to a 9mm slug between the eyes.Classier yet weaker. Both sides of the picture are are essential for it to work. We have to be credibly in the lead for the first 35 minutes at least.
I am at least two thirds of the way towards my career aim of becoming a Supervillain, having acquired the right sort of cat, namely a Birman. Unfortunately I don't have the right accent. Despite origins rooted in impeccable middle class threadbare-sofa-but-lots-of-books-land I emerged sounding distinctly estuarial. (In other words, should I have cause to say "forty thousand feathers" it would come out as "fawty fazand fevvers") I was finally taught to say the "th" sound by a fellow student at Oxford University. And just to add to the comedy, the girl who taught me sounded middle class despite being working class.
"Back in the Golden Era of Warblogging, last month,"
says AintNoBadDude. "Ye-esss?" you ask. "And then what?" Then you click the link, you lazy so-and-sos. I just thought it was a neat line. Arrr, last month, them were the days, them were. Actually the Dude has plenty of erudite stuff all about gun laws and the US constitution. I know I ought to be participating but am obliged to fight for computer time with Pokemon fanatics. Talking of which:POLITICAL JOKE: free to good home equipped to develop it as it deserves.
What would Osama Bin Laden be, considered as a Pokemon card?
Letwin proves his mettle.
Maybe I do like Oliver Letwin after all, if he's the sort of chap to chase thieves down the street in his dressing gown. Letwin's story of "having a go" had a happier ending than this one, where a man was killed trying to prevent the theft of his wife's parents' car. Am I reading too much into the absence of the usual comment from policemen that members of the public should not attempt to tackle criminals? The policeman in this case gave an impression of fellow-feeling, rather than the usual line that the police monopoly is sacrosanct. You could say that "having a go" killed this man. But you could equally well say that he was killed by being born into a time where most people don't. The hue and cry is gone from the world. Most people leave it to the police, or, as a natural maturing to the habit of delegation, to no one. Let's hope times are changing.
January 03, 2002
Good fairies
clustered round Moira Breen's cradle. "You shall be amusing," said one. "You shall be passionate," said another, "You shall be graced with every civilized accomplishment from skill in watercolour to knowing what to do with fish-forks," said another (the benevolent Allpurposia). Alas, a bad fairy called "Me" was also present. She had sneaked in at the back. And, with an ugly cackle, this bad fairy said, "and the nice name your parents gave you will forever be associated, in the minds of persons who read The Lord of The Rings at a young age when only shakily literate, with that dark and terrifying place where the Octopus-thing grabbed Frodo, and Gandalf fell fighting the Balrog."As well as my Moira/Moria problem I have my Slytherin problem. Everybody else in the world thinks it's obvious: you say it "Slitherin." Snakes are the house emblem, snakes slither, obvious innit? Except to the bad fairy Me, and I no longer have the excuse of youth. I managed to read the name as Sly-therin, to rhyme with spy-therin, and I do spy therein an echo of "sly", which is what Slytherin people are. Confused? You won't be after this week's episode of...
That was a reference to popular culture. I do so know about popular culture. Up to about 1985, anyway. The Milton is but borrowed clothes, alas, mostly from my husband. Press his button (like I just did; it's somewhere just above his pectoralis major) and you get, "His pride has cast him down from heaven with all his host of rebel angels by whose aid aspiring to set himself in glory above his peers he trusted to have equalled the Most High if he opposed...". The difficult bit is getting him to stop.
He came out with all that just from memory. Guaranteed. Not checked by any means, electronic, print or psychical. And here, equally guaranteed to be the pure product of my mind without artificial aids, is something from my memory, by which you can judge the tenor of its contents: Klaatu barada nikto!
A sleepless night for Dawson.
As many people will know (but I didn't, due to the obligation to share computer time with holiday-maddened kids and spouse), Dawson.com has been hacked. My sympathies to him. I bet the hacker squeals like a stuck pig when his social security comes late, but congratulates himself on his daring acts when he can ruin someone else's week.
Life imitates Blog
was the header of an e-mail from Eric Bainter. He pointed out this Damianation! story about... Well, let's use his own words:I CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY WE LAWYERS HAVE SUCH A BAD REPUTATION: a paroled prisoner is suing Canada's National Parole Board for $1.6 million, saying he never should have been released from jail.
I had not seen Damian's story when I posted mine. The fact that a real-life example pops up on the same day is, unfortunately, not surprising.
And a surprisingly pro-American account of the war in Afghanistan
. Cor! Think of the amount that Guardian sub-editor must have knocked back to leave him still comatose when this floated over his desk: "Villagers protested afterwards that the raid was unjustified because they harboured no foreigners such as Bin Laden. They did not mention harbouring Afghan Talibs."
A monarchist at the Guardian.
What price the job of the sleepy sub-editor who let this article by Hugo Young through the net?
January 02, 2002
The Blog That Would Not Die.
We all saw it, did we not? Before being subsumed into Samizdata, that skiver Christopher Pellerito wrote a message of farewell. To dust thou had returned, O Libertyblog. OK, so he said he would write for both in the next few weeks, but I thought that was on a level with promising to keep in touch with people you meet on holiday. There I was, asking myself gloomily whether it was time to remove the sidelink, and then I saw the blog move... Eerie stuff. This time he was saying, stop homelessness in NYC, end rent controls now. Now it's not that I disagree with this fine sentiment. And I admit that Mr Pellerito, who gets his hands dirty with the stuff, knows more about economics than I do. But I think he's wrong on this:Price controls create excess demand. In the housing market, excess demand equals homelessness.The trouble with that as currently phrased is that when the dear compassionate peepul read it they think "'excess demand?' Is that what you call the human tragedy of homelessness, you heartless capitalist scum?" So, unless there is a mystic economics reason why one cannot, I submit that a better phrasing is that price controls create reduced supply.
Do you want to see something really scary?
Remember that moment from the Twilight Zone movie? Perhaps you feel that a Telegraph story about the Health and Safety Executive being sued by a rail company does not really compete. But if you go to work by rail this should scare you witless. OK, why? Well, remember how we are always hearing from the bien-pesants how the dreadful thing about the setup of Railtrack-and-train operating companies-and-shareholders and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all divides responsibility and hence compromises safety? Let's face it: this is a true and reasonable complaint; though you never hear them say that it can be answered as well or better by privatization as by nationalization. But if you really want to see how division of responsibility degenerates into absence of responsibility, just introduce those beloved friends of the public, safety regulators. The train company are suing the Health & Safety Executive because the HSE did not police them, the train company, well enough to prevent the Paddington disaster.As ridiculous and offensive as a burglar suing the police for not catching him, you say? Yes, and you can expect that to happen - if it has not already. I once personally dealt with a case where a person who tried to kill himself with broken window glass in a Social Security office sued them for "lack of care" in not fitting safety glass. All are natural extensions of the idea that the State is responsible for everything that happens. For a brief moment, as the writ lands on some official desk, the State appears to be the victim. In fact the slight wounds it suffers then are no more than the pathetic scratches inflicted on a grizzly bear by its struggling victim as the bear crushes the life out of its prey. The prey is all of us.
January 01, 2002
Just why do we so often give our bad guys
English accents?I quickly worked through the obvious answers:
1) residual resentment of George III
2) Americans associate English accents with wealth and so the villains are proxies for the ruling class and evil corporate executives who rob the common man on a daily basis.
3) Feelings of inferiority because we don't use the letter u as aften as you do. Und so weiter.
Then it hit me. It is all John Milton's fault. Writers for tv and movies are frequently former English majors who labored over Paradise Lost and its star, Satan. In addition to being evil, he is sophisticated, complex, tortured, and interesting. And of course Satan speaks with an impeccable English accent. He is the template. Mystery solved.